Tutors in Sociology Discuss Tutorial System In Answer To Questionnaire

I feel that the lowest two groups can not be tutored in sociology but must be coached--taught by dogmatic statements or by the suggestions of friendship. My students of the lower groups feel neglected because I use only dogmatic statements with them. I feel that after all social processes are so vast and subjective that they will forget these teachings as soon as they leave college and I am discouraged in attempting to influence their beliefs by the application of time necessary for the "dogmatic teaching of suggestion" by friendship alone.

On the other hand, the upper students respond so well to tutorials that I am constantly alarmed that they will ask me to direct their thinking into fields of sociology in which I have done no great amount of original work.

The class V and VI students are generally so incompetent or so busy with other things that for them tutorial work is an imposition. If they neglect the reading, one can only amuse them for the period or review the reading for them. Both of these are useless procedures, wasting my time and theirs, so I ask them to either review their work or do their reading and return to see me. Exchanging mere opinions is more or less a waste of time.

These are my honest opinions. I have indicated above my limitations as to the tutorial system. Harvard expects a great deal of its professors and I feel that you should sympathize with us if sometime we neglect some phases of it.

I did not study under the Harvard system and have had only two years' experience as a tutor. Furthermore, my academic experience has been where there were so many students one could deal personally with only the brighter ones. I feel also that I am ill prepared in many problems of sociology. I think tutorial work in this field should be combined with some original library research by the competent tutees. I would feel then that when I impressed any student with a principle of sociology, he would accept it from his own experience and not because I said so. I think this is due to the peculiar subjective nature of sociological phenomena and the fact that laws in sociology often contravene popular impressions and current pseudo-mores.

I should like to preface my remarks by saying that I am a firm believer in the value of the tutorial system, and by this I mean the tutorial system that is now in effect at Harvard. It is manifestly imperfect, but with all its imperfections it represents a considerable advance over the educational system prevailing at Harvard twenty years ago. In my opinion the tutorial system has been successful in stimulating the intellectual interests and the intellectual achievements of the superior, and also of the average, student to a point far beyond that attained before the system was introduced; it has also been successful in encouraging habits of clear and independent thinking in the average and in the superior student.

Main Weakness of System

The main weakness of the tutorial system, as I see it, lies in its failure to accomplish (in many instances at least) what has always been regarded as one of its primary aims; namely, to correlate the knowledge gained in courses in such a way as to enable the student to get a grasp of his subject as a whole and an understanding of the interrelations between its fundamental problems. This failure on the part of the tutorial system would not be so serious were it not that the system of general examinations is, generally speaking, quite efficient in testing the student's capacity to interrelate and to systematize the knowledge that he has gained in his courses. The questions included in the general examinations are very carefully selected with this end in view. I venture to say that the result is, in many cases, that the student finds himself obliged to do a lot of thinking during the three hours in which he is taking the examination that he ought to have done, and ought to have been helped to do, during the three years previous to taking the general examinations.

Tutor Must Be Mature

You will note that I have not said that the tutorial system fails to perform this function in all cases; I have said simply "in many cases." I am sure that the function of correlation and systematization is admirably performed by those tutors (unfortunately a minority) who have been studying in a field long enough, to enable him to perform that function. In other words, the success of the tutorial system in performing the function in question depends on the maturity of the tutor. I do not have to tell you that most of the tutorial work in Harvard College is done by the less mature tutors. It has been said that this is a stage which we shall outgrow in time, but there is a danger in being too optimistic on this point. As a man advances in his Department, the tendency is to use his services more and more largely for course instruction, and to cut down on the tutorial load that he has to carry.

Poor Basis of Promotion

The trouble with the "less mature tutors," as I have called them, is not that they are poor teachers; on the contrary, many of them are better teachers than some of their colleagues superior to them in rank. The trouble is that many of them have graduate courses and Ph.D. theses on their hands; or, if they have passed the Ph.D. stage, they are putting their best efforts into research work, since they have learned that the full professors in their Department (with whom lie their chances of promotion) are primarily interested in their ability and their productivity as scholars, and only secondarily interested in their ability as teachers and tutors.

Incompatibilities

To some extent there is an incompatibility between conspicuous attainment in the field of research and conspicuous attainment in the field of teaching and tutoring. A good tutor should have read widely, not only in the special field in which he is doing research, but in other fields of his Department and in still other fields covered by related Departments. Occasionally his research interests may lead him to do this, but for the most part his research work imposes intensive reading in a relatively narrow field. How can we expect a group of specialized research workers to perform for others the function of correlating and systematizing knowledge when they have been unable, and largely owing to the conditions under which they work, to perform that function for themselves?

Differentiation Necessary

I doubt if much can be accomplished by adopting a policy under which those men would be selected for promotion who are good tutors and lectures as well as good scholars. Men of this type are rare. On the other hand, I should like to see Harvard adopt a policy under which teaching ability became the main criterion of promotion in all cases. Is it not possible to differentiate between these members of the Faculty whose main job is research and those whose main job is lecturing and tutoring? Could not promotion in the first group be made to depend on productivity as a scholar and in the second group on success as a teacher?

Waste Time on Mediocre Students

As regards your question eleven, all that I can say is that most of the time spent by tutors on inferior and mediocre students is wasted, but we must be very careful in defining what we mean by mediocre. Using course grades as a basis won't do; I know plenty of "C" men who, because of their personality and ability to think for themselves, make excellent tutees and respond well to tutorial work. On the whole, I should favor restricting tutorial instruction to Honors Candidates, as you suggest.

Another reform that might be helpful is closer supervision by the Chairman of Boards of Tutors of the reading assigned by the tutors under their jurisdiction. Some reading is highly valuable so far as concerns preparation for General Examinations; other reading is practically valueless from this standpoint.